Management Company Accusations

R

redbhoy

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Some time ago the Management Company from the Estate I live in announounced the names and addresses of all the people who hadnt paid their management fees.

The girl I rent the room from spoke to a solicitor and was told that they were in the wrong doing this.

Yesterday a letter came through from the Management Company explaining about the water shortage and bin collections. They maintain in their letter that the reason the rubbish wasn't collected was because people werent paying their management fees and that some people were leaving bags outside the bin area and that residents should report these people.

Can management companies get away with this type of behaviour?

Trying to turn residents against each other is despicable in my opinion and trying to blame the non-collection of bins on this seems wrong to me also especially considering that the lorries couldnt get into the estate for weeks due to the bad weather and poor conditions in the Estate.

Personally, Id have thought the management company should have been out gritting the roads in the estate seeing as they clamp cars around the Estate for 'irregular' parking.

Are there guidelines for what management companies can do or say in relation to these matters?
 
All members of the management company (the owners) are entitled to a list of debtors...which would be people with outstanding fees. Some publish them, some circulate on request, some don't. Ours includes them with our accounts.

If the company doesn't have the funds to pay for basic services then everyone suffers eg bin collections, landscaping etc. If this was my estate and I'd been subsidising non-paying units then I'd certainly want to know! And of course if people are littering by leaving bags outside the bin area they should be reported.

The MC probably have clampers on a contract, the MC gain nothing by clamping. Regarding gritting, some companies did, some don't. Ours hired a contractor a few months ago to do it but he ran out of grit!

Bottom line is as a tenant you have no rights to any involvement with the management company, your landlord needs to get legal advice...from a solicitor who knows what they are talking about.
 
I don't see what the problem is.

The big issue is the failure of property owners who are members of the management company not getting involved in resolving ongoing management company issues.

I think the property owners should address their own obligations, responsibilities and liabilities before running off to solicitors to get advice on potential defamation issues!

"Trying to turn residents against each other is despicable in my opinion" - no comprendez.

mf
 
There are possible issues with data protection and the right to privacy here, but I'm no expert on the law as it applies to either.

If each Member has become contractually bound to pay management fees and signed up to a contract thaat specified this method of advertising late payers, then I think the data protection and privacy issues may not apply, or at least may be legally set aside for the common good.

I don't think this "outing" is particularly draconian and I commend the management company for apparently trying to nip non-payment of fees in the bud.

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The OP may have a grievance against non-collection of waste on health grounds - who wouldn't?

There is an issue of whether or not the debt situation directly caused the non-collection of bins or was it the difficult access within the estate caused by badly parked cars in the snow or the snow itself - again, both issues to be concerned with.

Finally there is the issue of whether the management company is offering good value for money given what its charging and the level of service its providing and its ensuring others are providing - an ongoing monitoring of management company metrics is advisable.

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I'm concerned to see that the OP's apparent first reaction to this is to berate the management company for carrying out their duties which include collection of management fees.

Whilst we are in difficult times, its one thing to elect to help your neighbour financially, quite another to sponge off your neighbours and expect them to pay for you.

In my recent experience its the people with money in their account who fail to even try to pay their bills.

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So I am worried about the reaction of the landlord:

- why was her first recourse a chat to the solicitor?
- why is the OP posting here about it?
- was she one of the defaulters?

Too many unknowns.

ONQ.

All advice on AAM is remote from the situation and cannot be relied upon as a defence or support - in and of itself - should legal action be taken.
Competent legal and building professionals should be asked to advise in Real Life with rights to inspect and issue reports on the matters at hand.
 
ONQ you seem to confuse Management Company and Management Agent in your post? A management company doesn't charge? Management agents do? MAs administrate the property, MC is the legal entity which owns all common property, all owners are members.
 
Are you missing your beauty sleep to advise me on my error?

Well, I'm honoured to stand corrected :)

Thanks.

ONQ.
 
If she has paid he fees and doesn't dump rubbish illegally then she has nothing to worry about. Do you think the other owners should suffer and say nothing about it?
They are legally allowed to give the names of debtors to the other members of the management company.
 
Shesells, Im just a tenant but Im a curious one. The owner of the apartment was in dispute with the MC as they were collecting a fee but werent doing some of the duties they claimed. The owner was brought to court by the MC and the MC never bothered turning up. She has been dealing with the MC via phone and letters. She went to a solicitor as a last resort and was advised that the MC was wrong to release her personal details.
Basically the owner of property was paying over €1000 to have her bins collected and just before the court date they came around trimming hedges and cutting grass when they hadnt done this for over a year having been called on numerous occasions.
 
The difficulty is that when the MC sets the management fee for the year, this figure is based on everybody who owns a unit paying. If some unit owners do not pay the fee there is going to be a shortfall and something has to give, and this is usually either bins not getting collected or green areas not being maintained. Its a balancing act and in the current financial environment I would not envy the members of any MC trying to justify why management fees need to increase to cover owners of units who cannot afford to pay the management fees.
 
Redbhoy,

The problem with the owner of your apartment is that she sees that she pays for a service and is it must be provided. A lot of apartment owners think the same. The owner is paying based on projected revenue and projected expenditure, both of which can change.

Most importantly the success of a management company is based on a number of the apartment owners getting involved in decision making and monitoring how money is spent and how money should be spent in the future. I believe that the owners time may be more productive if they spoke to the other owners rather than a solicitor.
 
OP I think you are also confusing Management Company and Management Agent. See the sticky at the top regarding the differences.

The legal advice your landlady got was wrong, all owners (members of management company) are entitled to know who the company's debtors are.
 
redbhoy said:
The owner of the apartment was in dispute with the MC as they were collecting a fee but werent doing some of the duties they claimed.
Click to expand...

She wasn't happy with the service provided and stopped paying her service charge. This would be a perfectly understandable way to deal with most companies but your landlord fails to realise that she is *part* of the management company. By not paying her service charge, all she did was guarantee that the management company would be unable to provide her the service she expects.

The owner was brought to court by the MC and the MC never bothered turning up.
Click to expand...

That's really poor form - the MC should definitely have turned up if for no other reason than they would definitely have won a non-payment case.
 
Can I refer you all to Shesells advice to me in this post above?

Are we talking about a management company, which I understand may have the job of collecting the fees, or the alleged non-performance of the management agent, who I understand gets paid the fees to administrate the development?

ONQ.
 
Even if is the management agent, the management company is responsible for appointing the management agent and ensuring that they discharge their responsibility.

The notable exception is where it is an incomplete development where it gets very messy.
 
I spoke to the data protection office about publishing the names of defaulting shareholders in the past they told me it was in breach of teh data protection act as its personal information.

When i then asked is it then unlawful for any company to list its creditors a debtors to shareholders or was it just specific to management companies and i was told that they would no longer communicate on teh matter and that they had made their position clear and if a company was reported for doing it that this is the view they would take.

Personally i don't see why its ok to publish who a company owes money to and what they owe and its not ok to do teh opposite. afetr all are the shareholders not entitled to know the full financial picture of the company.

the banks and government have lost thousads of records over recent years on stolen/misplaced laptops and they get a slap on the wrist and a small fine so maybe it might be worth the risk. Also i think any shareholder can view the accounts at any time so why not make that time convenient for everyone like say at AGM

I'm curious as to why a tennat would be interested in a company listing debtors because it's not like that tenant is going to be on it. the only concern a tennant should have is that the agreed serives as listed in the lease between the tenant and the landlord are in place. the Management company has no contract with the tenant after all. so the only concern a tennant should have is the bins are collected, lifts work, place clean and tidy, car park working etc and if not then its up to the landlord to sort that out for the tenant not the company. the financial position of the company should be no concern to a tenant in my view
 
In the initial post you'll see that the management company issued a letter blaming the non-collection of bins on non-payments of fees. The bin area was like rubbish mountain, very unhygenic although the snow was a welcome deterrant to flies and smell.
The bin-men couldnt access the area due to the snow and ice but they did wheel down two extra wheelie bins to throw rubbish into but this was far from adequate.
It seemed to me that the Management Company/Agent was using this as an excuse to flag the non-payment of fees by disgruntled property owners. I thought this was a little underhanded.

(You're right that it has nothing to do with me but could you imagine a world where people didnt care about what went on around them?? )
 
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